The Expanse - Season 5 (Spoilers!)

[Mabus]

Welp, the final episode of season 5 aired, and wow, they did save the best for the end, though at the cost of a dull season. It's clear that they're replacing Alex with Bull, I guess with Clarissa and maybe Bobbie on board, the ship will be quite crowded. The first battle was a bit confusing at first, but it's still good and the Ring gate battle was really good, I liked how even nearly crippled the UNN and MCRN ships were still kicking ass and it took a backstab from the Medina and the deserting Martian fleet to win the battle, because Marco is still not as clever as he thinks he is. And the Barkeith vanishing looks like something out of a music video, but it's still great nonetheless and was a wham moment. The other wham moment is the half-finished Ring builder ship seen in very lower orbit on Laconia (see TLJ and STD, this is how you do lower orbit ships visible from ground) and the credits revealing said ship powering up was the cherry on top, though I'm pretty sure they'll merely tease Laconia over the next season, rather than show too much.

[technobabbler]

The finale of season 5 should have been the season 5 mid-season cliffhanger.

Yes, IMO, there was that much fat that could've been edited out from season 5.

but I haven't read the books, and it seems that the biggest Expanse fans are those who read the books beforehand.

IMO, Expanse could've been a bigger hit if they got the pacing of their seasons correct---season 1 takes way too long to ramp up. The episodes w/the Ganymede botanist/Meng arc was paced great.

And if they got rid of skewing the color hues to make everything so blue and gray. It's annoying unless you're really prepared to finish out the show.

[technobabbler]

Feel bad for Expanse fans as even here where you can probably find a long thread about Neelix and with Chuck's reviews of the books, not many people want to take about Expanse.

[Mabus]

Feel bad for Expanse fans as even here where you can probably find a long thread about Neelix and with Chuck's reviews of the books, not many people want to take about Expanse.

I'm not that surprised to be honest. While The Expanse, both the book and the TV series is fairly popular among many sci-fi circles, it's still stuck in the same category as all the other dozens of shows that were either groundbreaking or had a good story with memorable characters but ultimately after the series ended people kind of forgot they existed (Babylon 5 and Stargate SG1 come in mind). Despite the MCU and all the comic book film craziness in the past decade, sci-fi is still niche (granted most comic books tend to lean towards science fantasy rather than science fiction), few sci-fi franchises have managed to stay relevant since the dawn of television and cinema.
But this is not something that's limited only to sci-fi. Breaking Bad is considered one of the best TV series from the last two decades and people still talk about it even today, but its spinoff, Better Call Saul doesn't get the same attention even though it's almost as good. The Sopranos is also considered a masterpiece of television with many people still use it as a reference when talking about storytelling, and some say it's responsible for the beginning of the Golden Age of Television, but I won't be able to agree to that since apart from a few clips on YouTube I haven't watched the show to give my honest opinion, and I'm not the only one.

[Riedquat]

I've fizzled out part-way through Season 4 of The Expanse (so why am I looking at a thread about Season 5 with spoiler warnings?) It's got some good stuff but I think I just find it too unpleasant - far too much everyone-about-to-stab-each-other-in-the-back about it for my tastes. Or it could simply be that I only started watching fairly recently and binged, so maybe just overdid it.

[Kinky Vorlon]

It's not as bleakly nihilistic as Game of Thrones or Walking Dead but the crew of the Roci play well off another and their interactions are usually pretty light and enjoyable.

[Mabus]

I do like that most of the characters in the show actually feel and behave like adults most of the time as opposed to some cocky wannabies that just say some quippy one-liners to sound cool.
And even when someone says a one-liner, it fits the character saying it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dn76ZPt_Y0